by Shaun Meeks
“Give it over and I may let you live,” he says again, his voice the same as it was the first time I saw him in my stairwell and the second time I saw him outside of Godfrey’s store the day I found the book. It’s the junkie. The one who hit me and infected me with the parasite.
“It’s you! The whole time it’s been you?”
“Just give me the book, Hunter, and maybe I’ll even let you live.”
“Why should I? What do you even want it for?” I ask, as I subtly look around the room for a weapon to use on him. He’s human, of this earth, so really almost anything I grab will be enough to kill him. I just need to get close enough to do it. And I do plan on ending him here and now. He might be pretending to be a junkie, acting like a homeless man, but if he has the ability to call forth ancient monsters to work for him, I’d hate to see what else he can do. Especially if he has this book.
“Yours is not to question why, yours is but to do or die,” he says, and smiles. “My dad used to say that to me. Any time I questioned him, asked him why I should do anything he asked me to do, he’d say it. Now I get to say it to you. Give me the book, Dillon, or I will end you here and now. Make it fast.”
He has nothing in his hands. No weapons, no tools or talismans, so I’m not so sure how he plans to do anything to me. Yet, he’s clearly clever, a tricky bastard who has done something most humans can’t. I’d rather just walk up to him and bludgeon him to death with the hefty book, but I have to be cautious. I need to attack at the right time.
“Are you upset that I killed your little pets?” I ask, hoping to egg him on a little, make him mad so he attacks first and loses his edge.
“Not really,” he says plainly, not moving at all. “Things die. That’s life. And if you don’t want to die either, if you don’t want your little redhead queen to follow shortly after, you better hand over the book.”
“Shut your fucking mouth. Don’t even mention her!” I growl, and feel my hands squeezing the book hard. “You even think about hurting her and I will turn your face into the same bubbling mess I left your pets in.”
“Then give me the book or not only will I kill her, I’ll give her a little of my—”
I don’t let him finish.
I throw the book in the air, send it flying towards him and he looks straight at it. His eyes are wide and his arms reach out to catch it, but he’ll never get the chance. While he’s distracted by the flying book, I rush him, grabbing a used butter knife off the table and I pounce on him. He cries out and we hit the ground. Before he has a chance to struggle, I use the blunted steel to tear into him. It’s not easy, but with enough force I manage to bury the knife into him over twenty times, ripping through his clothes and flesh sloppily.
“Please…no…it’s not me…please…I wouldn’t hurt…”
He gargles the words as blood fills his lungs and stops his lies as the knife goes into his windpipe. His hands stop flaying against me, fingers lose their strength, and fall to his sides. Blood drools from the corners of his mouth. I pull the knife from his throat and there are a few weak arterial sprays as the heart comes to a stop. I wait a moment, ready to stab again in case he’s still alive. After a minute there’s nothing at all, just a pathetic man in a spreading pool of his own gore.
He’s dead.
It’s finally over.
I stand up feeling good. Normally, a person would be shaky after a thing like this, but I’m used to death at this point. Killing him, even though he’s human and it’s a little out of the norm for me, is still just part of the job. Now, I need to do something so that nobody sees the dead man just inside my doorstep.
I grab the junkie’s leg and pull him a little further into my apartment. Blood smears on the floor as I shut the door and pull out my phone. I make a quick call, figuring I need to handle this fast. I know exactly who to call.
There’s a knock at my door.
I call out for him to come in. I walk out into the living room with a cup of coffee as Detective Garcia steps into my apartment for the first time. I’m glad to see he’s alone. When I called him and told him what happened, I hoped his family duty would come before his work. This dead man was the one responsible for the kidnapping of his son, the very person who threatened to bring down everything that Garcia knew. I figured it would be enough to make him push aside what was proper, to do what was right for his boy, and for me.
“Jesus,” Garcia says and shuts the door. “You sure did a number on him.”
“Would you’ve done any less?”
“If it’d been me, you wouldn’t even know he was human,” Garcia answers, and gets closer to the body. “What did you use on him?”
“A butter knife. It was the first thing I saw. Grabbed it as I ran at him and that’s that.”
“Not sure I’ve ever seen anyone killed with one before. Shit.”
“So how should we handle this?” I ask, seeing as I’ve never had to get rid of a dead man before. Since I called him, I had images of carrying the shadowy man, the junkie to my bathtub and sawing him up into pieces, and then putting the small bits into garbage bags. It’s not a pleasant thought, but it’s one of many things that went through my mind while I was alone.
Garcia stands up, walks over to my couch and sits down. He looks a little stressed, no doubt he’s trying to figure out how best to deal with it. I think of telling him about a few of the ideas I had, but he’s a trained police officer, a detective that has dealt with homicides. If anyone knows how to dispose of a dead body and get away with it, it should be him.
“You have any more of that coffee? I could use a cup,” he says, as he leans back, eyes closed.
“Sure. How do you take it?”
“Lots of cream, lots of sugar.”
I head to the kitchen and go to work, waiting to hear what he might offer. When he says nothing, I decide to ask him about the kids and his son.
“Everything is fine. The kids were returned to some very happy parents, my son is currently with my sister. All them are shaken up, but no doubt the whole situation will be buried deep in their subconscious before long, where it can grow and fester until they are adults with ruined lives.”
“That’s a dark way to look at it,” I say, and grab the cream from the fridge.
“It’s not a Disney story. This is messed up.”
“How about with your bosses? Did you spin it so they bought how you found the kids?”
“I didn’t even try. I just said there was reports of some sort of strange things going on there and boom, I found the kids. When my superiors showed up and spoke to a few people, they went on about a movie shoot, monsters and all kinds of bizarre things. I think everyone is just happy to be able to tell the media the kids are home safe tonight.”
“But you’re in the clear, right?” I ask, and come out with his coffee.
“Sure. I’m the hero. And now I get to call this in and hope my hero stature is enough to make everyone buy the bullshit I’m about to give them.” He takes the coffee and reaches into his suit jacket. From there he pulls out a pocketknife. “Wipe my prints off this. Use the cloth to carry it over to him and put it in his hands. Make sure you squeeze his hand around it or they’ll be able to tell it’s a plant.”
“Then what?”
“Then we call it in. You’re going to say he attacked you with that while you were eating and you defended yourself.”
“And that’ll work?”
“Look, it sounds like bullshit, but I’ll take the call and then it’s really only you, me and my bosses. With everything else, hopefully this will slide by with no issues.” He sips the less than hot drink, colder than it should be thanks to all the cream, and he gives me the thumbs up. “Nobody is going to give a shit about him. Especially not me. Not to mention I owe you big time. This I guess is just the first payment.”
That’s what I was hoping to hea
r.
Wednesday
After the police left yesterday and took the junkie/shadowy man’s dead body away, the first thing I did was call Rouge. I was excited to and hoped she’d come right home to me. When she picked up on the fifth ring, I was worried I’d caught her sleeping in.
“I was just out in the backyard with my friend, Tanya,” she told me. “I take it things are back to normal?”
“As normal as they can be. Can you come home tonight?”
“I don’t think so. I already made plans, but I will be back tomorrow afternoon, promise,” she’d told me, and that would have to do.
I told her about everything that had happened, right up until the moment the police left my house. She said little on the phone. There were a few wows, and oh my God or two, and more than a handful of gasps. When I was done, she told me she hoped this wasn’t going to be a frequent thing.
“I should hope not,” I’d told her, and tried to laugh it off, but it’s been getting harder and harder to find this funny. Not only was this one of the hardest things I’ve ever faced, seen more people killed than I’d ever cared to, had to kill a human myself, but Rouge’s life was in some kind of peril. This was the second time since I met her that someone threatened harm to her, and I can’t help but question how long I can do this for. Not that I plan on leaving her. I’d leave the job before that ever happened. But if I do quit, there’s no way I can stay on this planet, and so I’m stuck between what I want and what I have to do.
We spoke for a little while after that and then only sent a few text messages through the night. We agreed to meet at her house for noon.
It’s a little afternoon when I get out of the cab in front of her house and I’m so happy that I can finally see her again. It feels like it’s been forever. I pay the cabbie and as I walk up to the door I wonder what we should do to celebrate the whole thing being over. Before I can even get to the door, it flies open and Rouge runs out into the yard to greet me. Her arms wrap around me, squeezing me tight and I return the gesture. Our lips meet and we kiss long and hard right there on the lawn. I don’t even know how long this goes on for, but if feels so good I don’t want it to end. She pulls away slightly, kisses my neck, and whispers things in my ear that get my blood pumping.
I guess I know how we’re celebrating our reunion.
After we lay in her bed for a few minutes following some very active catching up we head out into the living room for snacks and TV. She’s telling me all about the fun she had up at her friend’s cottage, of how she went fishing, swimming in a terrifying dark pond and roasted marshmallows during a meteor shower, and goes to the YouTube app on her PlayStation. I’m too busy watching her, looking at the way her skin looks with her flushed afterglow, that I don’t even notice right away what she put on.
But then I hear a sound I remember all too well and my blood runs cold.
I turn and there on the screen is a video of me and the Colossus out in the Distillery. There are people everywhere as I struggle to get away, looking all spastic as I do, and then like a moth to the flame, the damn beast is up in flames. It’s a terrible sight. I hear Rouge gasp. Even though it’s over fast, the asshole that posted it put it on a loop so we get to see it over and over again. As it fades out it says Fact or Fiction in ridiculous, bold lettering. I look at it again and see that even though it was posted yesterday, it already has over a million views.
That sucks.
“Can you pull up the comments?” I ask her, not having any idea how this thing works. She does, saying nothing at all at this point and we scroll through them.
So fake.
I call bullshit.
Who dresses like that anymore? Are those boot cut or relaxed fit jeans? This guy’s from the 90’s.
Monsters are real. They are created by the government and this is one that obviously got away. I bet that guy’s actual a Nobody Man and there’s a black helicopter close by.
Photoshop.
Look closely at it. You can tell that it’s CGI. How lame!
Dumbledore6969, why post this bullshit? You’re such a dickbag!
The comments go on and on like that. Either people think it’s fake, or they sound like a conspiracy nut. Either way, I feel like I’m in the clear. I look over at Rouge and she doesn’t look too happy.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“This can’t be good for you, can it?”
“How so?”
“Couldn’t you get in some serious trouble? I mean there’s video of you involved in killing that thing. Didn’t you say something about that?”
“It’ll be fine. I didn’t have a choice. You can tell it attacked me. To anyone that watches it, I didn’t do anything against the rules. Not really.” I’m not totally sure about that, but hey, I have to stay positive about these things.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, darling, positive.”
She leans over and kisses my cheek and I feel a round two coming on. “I can’t believe how many people think it’s fake though. There’s not a single comment by a sane person that questions it.”
“I know. Even when I was there, people pretty much accepted the bullshit excuse I gave them that we were filming a movie.”
“How could they? It sure it looked pretty real in person.”
“Smelt nasty too.” I laugh. “But people will believe what they want to, or what they need to. It’s easier that way. It’s hard for someone to see something like that and accepted it as the truth, no matter how obvious it is. Better to just call it fake and move on, than it is to face the craziness.”
“This is that whole faith thing again, isn’t it?”
“Sort of,” I say, and lean in for another kiss. “Maybe we should find a way to forget about that video. I think there’s something in the bedroom that could help.”
“And what’s that?”
“Me all naked and sexy like,” I say with a bad Scottish accent, as I rub my chest and act like a fool. “You know you want this sexy beast.”
“Damn right I do, monster slayer.”
The rest of the day we spend in bed. The night looks the same.
Life can be good.
Sunday
I don’t know what made me do it, but I decided to come out to the church today. I spoke to Garcia on the phone and he said he was coming out for the last mass of the day, which was set for eleven-thirty in the morning. I show up and there are people milling in with smiles on their faces and greetings for everyone. It’s kind of nice. Living in the city you don’t always get to see this kind of friendliness, so in a way, it’s refreshing.
I don’t see Garcia or his son anywhere around so I head in to find a seat. I sit next to an elderly woman with a lilac dress and a head full of platinum hair, and when I do she smiles at me. I can’t help but return it. After all the bad things that have happened over the last little while, this is what I need. Nice, genuine people.
The crowd whispers quietly among themselves and I scan around for the detective. There’s no sign of him. Maybe he came to an earlier mass or decided not to show up at all. I consider leaving right then, but the organ starts to play and everyone is rising. Too late now.
Father Ted and a group of altar boys come walking down the aisle. Ted is nodding to everyone he passes as a boy beside him swings a Thurible full of incense. When the priest’s eyes meet mine, he smiles brightly and mouths hello, Dillon, to me. I nod back.
Once on the altar, mass starts and it’s quite interesting. Father Ted reads a sermon about change and it has everyone listening.
“Today, like every day before it, and the ones still to come; is a new day. And with a new day, comes the chance to change things. Every day we wake up, get ready and head out to face the world, usually doing things as a routine, following the order as we think we must. But in order to grow and learn, we mu
st challenge ourselves and force change in our own lives and the world. There are so many stories in the bible that teach us about this, but I’d rather you think of your own lives, your own experience and how change did, or could’ve made your life and the lives around you better. Did you take a walk instead of a bus, and that bus was in an accident? Did you decide not to go into work and had a wonderful day connecting with your children? Or maybe you refused to follow rules that you thought were unnecessary and unneeded and found true happiness at the end of the day.”
The words sound like they’re aimed right at me. I know all about that, change. I took a chance and said no to following the rules, the status quo, and found Rouge. I’ve never been happier. I could’ve stuck to the laws and regulations given to all hunters, but then where would I be? Unhappy is where’d I be. Hearing the words come out of Father Ted’s mouth, and finding a connection to them brings another smile on my face on a day already filled with so many. Once again I’m glad I came out here for this.
He continues, and I listen, though I’m distracted by my own thoughts. I want to get back to Rouge’s house after this and enjoy another well-deserved day off with her. We earned it.
The sermon is followed by a few hymns, and then communion. After that he says a few more nice words about loving one another and finding peace in God. When it’s all done, Father Ted comes down off the altar, and walks to the main doors of the church to say farewell to his parishioners. I stand close by, watching just as I had not long ago and wait for him to finish. He set the altar boys off and finally comes walking over to me with a smile and his arms held out in greeting.
“Dillon, so glad you came out. If ever I was surprised to see someone in the pews, it was you. What brings you by? Looking for a little faith in God?”
“I actually came by to see Detective Garcia. He said he was stopping by and I thought I would come see him and his son, and since I was here I’d come see you too. If you’re not too busy of course.”